I was super lucky to get to participate as a panelist at 3 Day Startup this year. If you aren’t familiar with 3 Day Startup it allows teams to form and then over the course of a weekend put together a startup. On the final day those teams pitch their startup ideas.
The program has been adopted all over the world:
100 programs on 5 continents have launched 54 companies receiving $18 million in funding. 27 companies from 3DS have been accepted to accelerators such as Y Combinator, TechStars, 500 Startups, and Capital Factory.
As a panelist my job is to ask questions and give advice to each of the companies after they pitch. In some cases those companies go on to raise money or join a startup accelerator and in others they just die and the founders with new experience go on to their next big idea.
#3DSAustin Panelists: @JoshuaBaer @seats @joshkerr Tim Kern @bartbohn @3DayStartup pic.twitter.com/7A87AjrzRw
— Carlos V. Estrada (@carlosvinicio07) March 3, 2014
The photo above makes it look like we are all sleeping but I promise you that we were awake. Its just horrible timing on that photo.
Hopefully I’ll get asked to be on the panel next year. I love these sorts of gigs.